A Very "Interesting" Tournament...

Chess tournaments are lots of fun, there is competition, fun games, and of course prizes. I'm sure that most serious chess players play or at least have played tournaments, and a lot of them have maybe won some of them. I am sure there are also many players that have gone undefeated! However, there are still those times when you have a really bad tournament. I just recently played this tournament, and it was a four round swiss system. In each game you had forty minutes to complete all your moves with a delay of five seconds. The first two rounds of the tournament were wins for me, and the last two I made I lost. The weird part is that in both games I had lost by making a horrible beginner blunder that had cost me the game. This tournament is the subject of my blog today. I will cover the last two games first since it is really the most instructive part of the tournament. Game 3

The exchange on 9...Nd4 would have been okay if white couldn't have played 10.Bxd4. White took with the bishop so he could open the e-file allowing himself to pin the black queen to his king if 10...exd4.Game 4

My mistake was at 11.Qe3 when I allowed the fork of my king, queen, and rook.

Game 1

When I analyzed this game I realized that my opponent had played an illegal move 39...Kg5, which I had not noticed while playing. This was an easy endgame for me.

Game 2

I was unable to add this game because there were errors in the notation. This game was very amusing to me because my opponent played was obviously completely new to even the concept of chess tournaments. He had made his first move and I made my move, and he used a whole minute off his clock to just write down the move. My opponent not only took a while to figure out how to write down the moves, but he also wrote them in a very sloppy way that looked as though he had used his left foot. I was sitting there watching him write and his time tic down until finally, he had made his move! The second part that made me want to laugh was that every move he forgot to hit his clock. I just stared at the board as though I was thinking until a few minutes later he would notice and finally finished his move! That's not all either he had made me play out an entire king and rook vs king endgame and while he took an hour to make his move. So this was probably by far the most hilarious (and slightly annoying) experience about this tournament. XD As always I hope everyone has enjoyed reading my blog, and make sure to keep checking in for more fun reading!